People From Connecticut, Colorado Offer to Bury Tamerlan Tsarnaev

Photo via Paul D. Keane

UPDATE: According to Worcester Police, after nearly a week in a local funeral home, the body of accused Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev has been moved, and buried in an undisclosed location.

The move came after more than several cemeteries, including sites in Cambridge and Boston, denied the funeral home’s requests to bury the body on their properties. “As a result of our public appeal for help, a courageous and compassionate individual came forward to provide the assistance needed to properly bury the deceased. His body is no longer in the City of Worcester and is now entombed,” according to a statement from the police department.

The Police Chief thanked “all of the officers who worked the security detail at the funeral home” and acknowledged their professionalism and dedication. He also thanked the funeral director who took on the daunting task, which spurred outrage on the streets outside his business, of finding a place to put the body to rest at the request of the family.

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EARLIER: Clerics from as far as Colorado have offered to put an end to a nearly week-long stalemate over what to do with the remains of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

According to CBS News, Sheikh Abu-Omar Almubarac, a founding member of an organization that helped build Colorado’s largest mosque, has offered an unmarked plot in the Denver area to Tsarnaev’s family so that they can hold a funeral for the accused bomber. He told the news originization that it would be up to the family to cover the cost of transporting the body if they were to welcome the offer, however.

In Connecticut, Paul D. Keane blogged about giving up a burial plot he purchased for his family, next to his mother’s grave, in the Mt. Carmel Burying Ground, to the Tsarnaev family. Keane wrote on his blog this week about the conditions for offering up the burial space:

The only condition is that I do it in memory of my mother who taught Sunday School at the Mt. Carmel Congregational Church for twenty years and taught me to “love thine enemy.”

Another anonymous man from Texas also offered a space for the deceased, according to Stefan, but the offer later fell through.

The offers started coming in after more than three cemeteries in Massachusetts told Peter Stefan, funeral director at the Graham Putnam and Mahoney Funeral Parlor in Worcester, where Tsarnaev’s body is, that they would not allow the suspect to be put to rest in their graveyards.

Family members have asked that the body be put in a grave in Cambridge, but the City Manager Bob Healy denied the request before Stefan even filed for a permit to do so. “The difficult and stressful efforts of the citizens of the city of Cambridge to return to a peaceful life would be adversely impacted by the turmoil, protests, and wide spread media presence at such an interment,” Healy said Sunday.

Stefan fielded more than 1,500 calls form around the world over the weekend, in regards to Tamerlan’s remains, but has since stopped returning calls to the press, according to an employee at the Worcester funeral home.

Stefan originally planned to have the issue squared away by Tuesday, asking that if he couldn’t find a plot that federal officials or the governor step in. Governor Deval Patrick refused to intervene, telling reporters on Monday that it is the families issue, not the state’s. “The family has options, and I assume that they will exercise one of those options, and I hope they do so soon,” Patrick said on his way out of his office Monday, according to the State House News Service.

Stefan says Tamerlan’s mother wants the body returned to Russia, where the family lives, which might be their last option—something even Mayor Tom Menino would like to see happen.